CHAPTER XX.
THE FIELD OF PISTORIA.
Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath, Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death. MACBETH.
The first faint streaks of day were scarcely visible in the east, whenCatiline, glad to escape the horrors which he had endured through the darksolitude of the night watches, issued from his tent, armed at all points,and every inch a captain.
All irresolution, all doubt, all nervousness had passed away. Energy andthe strong excitement of the moment had overpowered conscience; andlooking on his high, haughty port, his cold hard eye, his resoluteimpassive face, one would have said that man, at least, never trembled atrealities, far less at shadows.
But who shall say in truth, which are the shadows of this world, which therealities? Many a one, it may be, will find to his sorrow, when the greatday shall come, that the hard, selfish, narrow fact, the reality afterwhich his whole life was a chase, a struggle, is but the shadow of ashade; the unsubstantial good, the scholar’s or the poet’s dream, which hescorned as an empty nothing, is an immortal truth, an everlasting andimmutable reality.
Catiline shook at shadows, whom not the ’substance of ten thousandsoldiers armed in proof,’ could move, unless it were to emulation anddefiance.
Which were in truth more real, more substantial causes of dismay, thoseshadows which appalled him, or those realities which he despised.
Ere that sun set, upon whose rising he gazed with an eye so calm andsteadfast, that question, to him at least, was solved for ever—to us itis, perhaps, still a question.
But, at that moment, he thought nothing of the past, nothing of thefuture. The present claimed his whole undivided mind, and to the presenthe surrendered it, abstracted from all speculations, clear and unclouded,and pervading as an eagle’s vision.
All his arrangements for the day had been made on the previous night soperfectly, that the troops were already filing out from the Prætorian gatein orderly array, and taking their ground on the little plain at the mouthof the gorge, in the order of battle which had been determined by thechiefs beforehand.
The space which he had selected whereon to receive the attack of Antonius’army, was indeed admirably chosen. It front it was so narrow, that eightcohorts, drawn up in a line ten deep, according to the Roman usage, filledit completely; behind these, the twelve remaining cohorts, which completedthe force of his two legions, were arrayed in reserve in denser and moresolid order, the interval between the mountains on the left, and thecraggy hill on the right, which protected his flanks, being much narroweras it ascended toward the gorge in which the rebel camp was pitched.
In front of the army, there was a small plain, perfectly level, lying inan amphitheatre, as it were, of rocks and mountains, with neither thicket,brake, nor hillock to mar its smooth expanse or hinder the shock ofarmies, and extending perhaps half a mile toward the consular army. Belowthis, the ground fell off in a long abrupt and rugged declivity, somewhatexceeding a second half mile in length, with many thickets and clumps oftrees on its slope, and the hillock at its foot, whereon still frownedChærea’s cross with the gory and hideous carcase, already blackened by thefrosty night wind, hanging from its rough timbers, an awful omen to thatarmy of desperate traitors.
Beyond that hillock, the ground swelled again into a lofty ridge, facingthe mouth of the gorge in which Catiline had arrayed his army, with alladvantages of position, sun and wind in his favor.
The sun rose splendid and unclouded, and as his long rays streamed throughthe hollows in the mountain top, nothing can be conceived more wildlyromantic than the mountain scene, more gorgeous and exciting than theliving picture, which they illuminated.
The hoary pinnacles of the huge mountains with their crowns ofthunder-splintered rocks, the eyries of innumerable birds of prey,gleaming all golden in the splendors of the dawn—their long abruptdeclivities, broken with crags, feathered with gray and leafless forests,and dotted here and there with masses of rich evergreens, all bathed insoft and misty light—and at the base of them the mouth of the deep gorge,a gulf of massive purple shadow, through which could be descriedindistinctly the lines of the deserted palisades and ramparts, whence hadmarched out that mass of living valor, which now was arrayed in splendidorder, just where the broad rays, sweeping down the hills, dwelt in theirmorning glory.
Motionless they stood in their solid formation, as living statues, onemass, as it appeared, of gold and scarlet; for all their casques andshields and corslets were of bright burnished bronze, and all the cassocksof the men, and cloaks of the officers of the vivid hue, named from theflower of the pomegranate; so that, to borrow a splendid image of Xenophondescribing the array of the ten thousand, the whole army lightened withbrass, and bloomed with crimson.
And now, from the camp in the rear a splendid train came sweeping at fullspeed, with waving crests of crimson horse-hair dancing above theirgleaming helmets, and a broad banner fluttering in the air, under thewell-known silver eagle, the tutelar bird of Marius, the God of thearch-traitor’s sacrilegious worship.
Armed in bright steel, these were the body guard of Catiline, threehundred chosen veterans, the clients of his own and the Cornelian houses,men steeped to the lips in infamy and crime, soldiers of fifty victories,Sylla’s atrocious colonists.
Mounted on splendid Thracian chargers, with Catiline at their head,enthroned like a conquering king on his superb black Erebus, they camesweeping at full gallop through the intervals of the foot, and, as theyreached the front of the array, wheeled up at once into a long singleline, facing their infantry, and at a single wafture of their leader’shand, halted all like a single man.
Then riding forward at a foot’s pace into the interval between the horseand foot, Catiline passed along the whole line from end to end, surveyingevery man, and taking in with his rapid and instinctive glance, everyminute detail in silence.
At the right wing, which Manlius commanded, he paused a moment or two, andspoke eagerly but shortly to his subordinate; but when he reached theextreme left he merely nodded his approbation to the Florentine, cryingaloud in his deep tones the one word, "Remember!"
Then gallopping back at the top of his horse’s speed to the eagle whichstood in front of the centre, he checked black Erebus so suddenly that hereared bolt upright and stood for a second’s space pawing the vacant air,uncertain if he could recover that rude impulse. But the rare horsemanshipof Catiline prevailed, and horse and man stood statue-like and immoveable.
Then, pitching his voice so high and clear that every man of that densehost could hear and follow him, he burst abruptly into the spirited andstirring speech which has been preserved complete by the most elegant(15)of Roman writers.
"Soldiers, I hold it an established fact, that words cannot givevalor—that a weak army cannot be made strong, nor a coward army brave, byany speech of their commander. How much audacity is given to each man’sspirit, by nature, or by habit, so much will be displayed in battle. Whomneither glory nor peril can excite, you shall exhort in vain. Terrordeafens the ears of his intellect. I have convoked you, therefore, not toexhort, but to admonish you in brief, and to inform you of the causes ofmy counsel. Soldiers, you all well know how terrible a disaster thecowardice and sloth of Lentulus brought on himself and us; and how,expecting reinforcements from the city, I was hindered from marching intoGaul. Now I would have you understand, all equally with me, in whatcondition we are placed. The armies of our enemy, two in number, one fromthe city, the other from the side of Gaul, are pressing hard upon us. Inthis place, were it our interest to do so, we can hold out no longer, thescarcity of corn and forage forbid that. Whithersoever we desire to go,our path must be opened by the sword. Wherefore I warn you that you be ofa bold and ready spirit; and, when the battle have commenced, that yeremember this, that in your own right hand ye carry wealth, honor, glory,moreover liberty and your country. Victorious, all things are safe to us,supplies in abundance shall be ours, the colonies and fre
e boroughs willopen their gates to us. Failing, through cowardice, these self-same thingswill become hostile to us. Not any place nor any friend shall protect him,whom his own arms have not protected. However, soldiers, the samenecessity doth not actuate us and our enemies. We fight for our country,our liberty, our life! To them it is supererogatory to do battle for thepower of a few nobles. Wherefore, fall on with the greater boldness,mindful of your own valor. We might all of us, have passed our lives inutter infamy as exiles; a few of you, stripped of your property, mightstill have dwelt in Rome, coveting that of your neighbors. Because thesethings appeared too base and foul for men’s endurance, you resolved uponthis career. If you would quit it, you must perforce be bold. No one,except victorious, hath ever exchanged war for peace. Since to expectsafety from flight, when you have turned away from the foe, that armorwhich defends the body, is indeed madness. Always in battle to who mostfears, there is most peril. Valor stands as a wall to shield itspossessor. Soldiers, when I consider you, and recall to mind your deeds,great hopes of victory possess me. Your spirit, age, and valor, give meconfidence; moreover that necessity of conquest, which renders evencowards brave. As for the numbers of the enemy, the defiles will notpermit them to surround you. And yet, should Fortune prove jealous of yourvalor, beware that ye lose not your lives unavenged; beware that, beingcaptured, ye be not rather butchered like sheep, than slain fighting likemen, and leaving to your foes a victory of blood and lamentation."
He ceased, and what a shout went up, seeming to shake the earth-fast hill,scaring the eagles from their high nests, and rolling in long echoes, likereverberated thunder among the resounding hills. Twice, thrice, that soulfraught acclamation pealed up to heaven, sure token of resolution untodeath, in the hardened hearts of that desperate banditti.
Catiline drank delighted inspiration from the sound, and cried intriumphant tones:
"Enough! your shout is prophetic! Soldiers, already we have conquered!"
Then leaping from his charger to the ground, he turned to his body-guard,exclaiming,
"To fight, my friends, we have no need of horses; to fly we desire themnot! On foot we must conquer, or on foot die! In all events, our peril asour hope must be equal. Dismount then, all of ye, and leading yourchargers to the rear slay them; so shall we all run equal in this race ofdeath or glory!"
And, with the word, leading his superb horse through the intervals betweenthe cohorts of the foot, he drew his heavy sword, and smote him onetremendous blow which clove through spine and muscle, through artery andvein and gullet, severing the beauteous head from the graceful andswanlike neck, and hurling the noble animal to the earth a motionless andquivering mass.
It was most characteristic of the ruthless and brutal temper of thatparricidal monster, that he cut down the noble animal which had so longand so gallantly borne him, which had saved his life more than once by itsspeed and courage, which followed him, fed from his hand, obeyed hisvoice, like a dog, almost like a child, without the slightest show of pityor compunction.
Many bad, cruel, savage-hearted men, ruthless to their own fellows, haveproved themselves not devoid altogether of humanity by their love to somefaithful animal, but it would seem that this most atrocious of mankindlacked even the "one touch of nature which makes the whole world kin."
He killed his favorite horse, the only friend, perhaps, that he possessedon earth, not only unreluctant, but with a sort of savage glee, and asneering jest—
"If things go ill with us to day, I shall be fitly horsed on Erebus, byHades!"
Then, hurrying to the van, he took post with his three hundred, and allthe picked centurions and veterans of the reserve, mustered beneath thefamous Cimbric Eagle, in the centre of the first rank, prepared to playout to the last his desperate and deadly game, the ablest chief, and themost daring soldier, that ever buckled blade for parricide and treason.
The Roman Traitor, Vol. 2 Page 20
